The Manhattan Project was a research and development project led by the United States with participation from the U.K. and Canada. The project's intention was the creation of the Atomic Bomb during World War II. Two different types of bombs were developed during the war, one called a gun-type fission weapon which used a hollow Uranium bullet propelled around a cylindrical target to combine pieces of sub-critical material. And the other was an Implosion-Type explosive which used a super-critical mass of plutonium in a spherical shape and high explosives to drive the plutonium in on itself. A spherical shell of high-explosive material is made up of fitting pieces called lenses which focus the explosion inward. These explosives are wired to all set off simultaneously. This creates enough force to increase the density of the sphere of plutonium to the point where is is super-critical. Causing the 20 megaton explosion.
Diagram of bomb showing the gun barrel, hollow uranium "bullet" and cylindrical "target"
Gun-Type Weapon
Implosion-Type Weapon.
Important Canadian and American Locations.
Map of the United States and southern Canada with major project sites marked
Collaboration with the United Kingdom
The British and Americans exchanged nuclear information but did not initially combine their efforts. Britain rebuffed attempts by Bush and Conant in 1941 to strengthen cooperation with its own project, codenamed Tube Alloys. However, the United Kingdom did not have the manpower or resources of the United States and despite its early and promising start, Tube Alloys soon fell behind its American counterpart. On 30 July 1942, Sir John Anderson, the minister responsible, advised Churchill that: "We must face the fact that ... [our] pioneering work ... is a dwindling asset and that, unless we capitalise it quickly, we shall be outstripped. We now have a real contribution to make to a 'merger.' Soon we shall have little or none.
Personnel
In June 1944, the Manhattan Project employed some 129,000 workers, of whom 84,500 were construction workers, 40,500 were plant operators and 1,800 were military personnel. As construction activity fell off, the workforce declined to 100,000 a year later, but the number of military personnel increased to 5,600. Procuring the required numbers of workers, especially highly skilled workers, in competition with other vital wartime programs proved very difficult. In 1943, Groves obtained a special temporary priority for labor from the War Manpower Commission. In March 1944, both the War Production Board and the War Manpower Commission gave the project their highest priority.
An Associate Professor of Radiology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, Stafford L. Warren, was commissioned as a colonel in the United States Army Medical Corps, and appointed as chief of the MED's Medical Section and Groves' medical advisor. Warren's initial task was to staff hospitals at Oak Ridge, Richland and Los Alamos. The Medical Section was responsible for medical research, but also for the MED's health and safety programs. This presented an enormous challenge, because workers were handling a variety of toxic chemicals, using hazardous liquids and gases under high pressures, working with high voltages, and performing experiments involving explosives, not to mention the largely unknown dangers presented by radioactivity and handling fissile materials.Yet in December 1945, the National Safety Council presented the Manhattan Project with the Award of Honor for Distinguished Service to Safety in recognition of its safety record. Between January 1943 and June 1945, there were 62 fatalities and 3,879 disabling injuries, which was about 62 percent below the rate of private industry.
There were many different people charged with making sure this task of creating the most powerful weapon ever known to man, the organization of the project is show by:
The Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development project led by the United States with participation from the U.K. and Canada. The project's intention was the creation of the Atomic Bomb during World War II. Two different types of bombs were developed during the war, one called a gun-type fission weapon which used a hollow Uranium bullet propelled around a cylindrical target to combine pieces of sub-critical material. And the other was an Implosion-Type explosive which used a super-critical mass of plutonium in a spherical shape and high explosives to drive the plutonium in on itself. A spherical shell of high-explosive material is made up of fitting pieces called lenses which focus the explosion inward. These explosives are wired to all set off simultaneously. This creates enough force to increase the density of the sphere of plutonium to the point where is is super-critical. Causing the 20 megaton explosion.Gun-Type Weapon
Implosion-Type Weapon.
Important Canadian and American Locations.
Collaboration with the United Kingdom
The British and Americans exchanged nuclear information but did not initially combine their efforts. Britain rebuffed attempts by Bush and Conant in 1941 to strengthen cooperation with its own project, codenamed Tube Alloys. However, the United Kingdom did not have the manpower or resources of the United States and despite its early and promising start, Tube Alloys soon fell behind its American counterpart. On 30 July 1942, Sir John Anderson, the minister responsible, advised Churchill that: "We must face the fact that ... [our] pioneering work ... is a dwindling asset and that, unless we capitalise it quickly, we shall be outstripped. We now have a real contribution to make to a 'merger.' Soon we shall have little or none.
Personnel
In June 1944, the Manhattan Project employed some 129,000 workers, of whom 84,500 were construction workers, 40,500 were plant operators and 1,800 were military personnel. As construction activity fell off, the workforce declined to 100,000 a year later, but the number of military personnel increased to 5,600. Procuring the required numbers of workers, especially highly skilled workers, in competition with other vital wartime programs proved very difficult. In 1943, Groves obtained a special temporary priority for labor from the War Manpower Commission. In March 1944, both the War Production Board and the War Manpower Commission gave the project their highest priority.
An Associate Professor of Radiology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, Stafford L. Warren, was commissioned as a colonel in the United States Army Medical Corps, and appointed as chief of the MED's Medical Section and Groves' medical advisor. Warren's initial task was to staff hospitals at Oak Ridge, Richland and Los Alamos. The Medical Section was responsible for medical research, but also for the MED's health and safety programs. This presented an enormous challenge, because workers were handling a variety of toxic chemicals, using hazardous liquids and gases under high pressures, working with high voltages, and performing experiments involving explosives, not to mention the largely unknown dangers presented by radioactivity and handling fissile materials.Yet in December 1945, the National Safety Council presented the Manhattan Project with the Award of Honor for Distinguished Service to Safety in recognition of its safety record. Between January 1943 and June 1945, there were 62 fatalities and 3,879 disabling injuries, which was about 62 percent below the rate of private industry.
There were many different people charged with making sure this task of creating the most powerful weapon ever known to man, the organization of the project is show by:
References
2. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/bomb3.html